MIT Student
11.139, Spring 2015
Film Notes: Bicycle Thieves
The director of Bicycle Thieves is Vittorio De Sica. It was released in 1948 and takes place at an
unspecified time after WWII in Valmelaina, Rome, Italy. The low-budget nature of film production
meant that Bicycle Thieves was filmed on location.
Five adjectives or phrases I would use to describe the city portrayed on film: an open space that feels
more like a container for people rather than a character with its own. The city also reveals itself to have
little pockets of tight-knit communities where the crowds of people protect their own. Bustling. Mobile.
In keeping with its neorealist style, there is no fixation on cueing the audience to the setting of the film
with fancy establishing shots of major tourist attractions; rather, the shots are composed and scaleddown to focus on how people interact with their space, which made the film more accessible and its
story more universal. It was filmed matter-of-factly, so even if there were grand monuments being
filmed, I simply didn’t notice because I just saw those architectural elements as being integral to the
space.
One remarkable scene was when the father and his son went to the restaurant to drink wine and eat
mozzarella sandwiches for lunch. The restaurant is crowded, and many people from different social
classes butt up against each other in this environment. Like Modern Times and Berlin, the consumption
of food and also where the consumption of food takes place are significant social markers in Bicycle
Thieves. The silent exchange between Bruno and the other boy from the wealthier family, where they
try to one-up each other by showing off what they’re eating, is emblematic of the heterogeneousness of
the urban environment, and that the simple act of eating can turn into a demonstration of power
dynamics between two distinct groups of people.
I also thought the ending was very moving and memorable. Ricci attempting to steal another man’s
bicycle (after sending away his son, because he didn’t want Bruno to witness the shame of his actions)
demonstrated how easily crime and suffering can perpetuate in the city environment, especially when
the acts are more or less justified because he needs to keep his job in order to survive and feed his
family. The issue of “crime in the city” was humanized in this film, and even though we see Ricci commit
the immoral act of stealing another man’s bike in the film, we sympathize with him, and in a way, also
sympathize with the person who stole Ricci’s bicycle at the beginning of the film.
Two questions/topics I would like to discuss in class: Would we sympathize with Ricci’s character as
much if Bruno was not in the film? I am also interested in discussing the sanctuary of “women’s spaces”
(such as the brothel, the psychic’s room, and the kitchens of the poor woman and Ricci’s wife) and what
happens when a male enters that space. I didn’t really notice or didn’t really recall very many women
simply wandering around the city while Ricci went around searching for his bike. Is De Sica explicitly
making a point about gender roles in his film, or was he simply neglecting to hire women extras?
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11.139 / 11.239 The City in Film
Spring 2015
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